A Pattern of Words

Exactly a year ago, I drove almost an hour away to pick up an $85 mud kitchen for E’s birthday (then realized I’d have to hide it for almost a week – that was fun). All summer long I watched as it barely got used. “You win some, you lose some,” I told myself. Then, low and behold, during the COLDEST winter months this year, I suddenly noticed the girls constantly huddling near the structure. Jars and yogurt containers started being swiped out of the recycling bin on a regular basis and cardboard got requested a lot. The nonstop, imaginative play has only revved up as the weather has warmed. They’re making mud pies, flower topped pizzas, rock cakes, and sneaking pitcher after pitcher of water across the yard (I finally had to put a stop to them filling the pitchers up in the bathroom sink – they’d leave behind dozens of muddy footprints. I resigned myself to the fact that no matter how many times I’d forbid them using the hose, it would still happen.

All that typing and I’m realizing this photograph doesn’t even include the mud kitchen itself. But suffice it to say, it’s getting used a lot and I’m very glad I decided to buy one. Birthday gifts can be so difficult. In this photograph, E and cousin R were discussing their creations as E filled up (yet another) pitcher of water to carry over to the kitchen. I think I need to buy her a water barrel.